UNESCO HIV and Health Education Clearinghouse

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Teaching about sex and relationships is one of the greatest challenges in not only the combating of HIV and AIDS, but also in preparing the youth for responsible sexual behaviour. Although it seems as if teachers to some extent do feel comfortable with the teaching of sexuality education at school, the question however remains as to whether youth get the information they require. In this article, are presented drawings produced by teacher participants in order to investigate the beliefs that teachers hold regarding young people’s needs from sexuality education. …

Using in-depth interviews, the authors asked sexuality educators in South Africa about their own professional preparation and what they believed were necessary educator characteristics for teaching Sexuality Education. Their findings show that the teachers taught Sexuality Education without any appropriate qualification or preparation, but because they had a lighter teaching load and had room to take on more teaching hours. Nevertheless, they all mention that ‘not anybody can teach Sexuality Education’. …

This article aims to explore Grade 11 learners perceptions and experience of the teaching of sexuality education. A total of 270 adolescent boys (n 121) and girls (n 149) from the Heidedal suburb of the greater Mangaung Municipality, South Africa, completed an anonymously written Teaching of Sexuality Education Attitude Scale (TSEAS). The questionnaire was constructed on a six-point Likert scale with response options ranging from 1 (highly disagree) to 6 (highly agree). …

Life Orientation teachers play a critical role in the teaching and learning of sexuality education in South African schools. Using an experiential participatory approach with 125 teachers in the Motheo district, Free State, I explored three questions: What messages did the teachers learn about sex and sexuality? How do these messages inform the teachers’ values? How do the teachers teach sexuality education? Despite its own problems and limitations, the participatory approach exploits and reinforces the life-space model proposed by Kurt Lewin. …

In this paper we explore the perceived desirable characteristics of South African Life Orientation teachers for teaching sexuality and HIV/AIDS. We also investigate the extent to which these characteristics can be understood as parts of a role script for teaching HIV/AIDS and sexuality. Data were collected from teachers who taught Grade Eight and Grade Nine students in South African public high schools. The teachers particularly emphasised the importance of personality and life experience as important characteristics for teaching sexuality and HIV/AIDS. …

Aims: This study aimed to investigate how confident and comfortable teachers at Tanzanian and South African urban and rural schools are in teaching HIV/AIDS and sexuality. It also aimed at identifying factors associated with teacher confidence and investigated how reported confidence was associated with the implementation of educational programmes on HIV/AIDS and sexuality. Methods: A survey was conducted among South African grade 8 and 9 Life Orientation teachers, and among science teachers for grade 5 to 7 in public primary schools in Tanzania. …

Teaching sexual and HIV and AIDS education in schools has been the subject of debate and discussion for a while now southern Africa. The debates have mainly centred around three key issues – at what stage to introduce it, what kind of curricula is appropriate and who is qualified to provide such teaching. South Africa is one the few countries in the region that have made attempts to introduce sexual and HIV and AIDS education at the secondary school level. Although this has had benefits, it has not been without its challenges. …